It’s weird ain’t it? A person used to work for me that was deaf, and I had to completely rethink how I existed. Not in a bad way, but if you plucked my eyes from my head my answer would be, “…and?”
Loss of Sound? I’d crawl into a hole and likely never come out. But Wes was awesome, and taught me a lot.
Tweed. Tweed helps 
Not faceblind, but pretty bad with names. Exacerbated by embarrassment. I know for a fact that I did at one point hear most of the names of people in my high school social group. But nobody uses each other’s names when they’re friends. And there’s nothing more embarrassing than to ask for someone’s name after talking with them during lunch for several years because you never managed to pick it up.
Facebook helped. Going through your friends’ extended networks and realizing “oh, that girl I chat with in the hall every Tuesday and Thursday is Allison. I was wondering who Allison was… I’m really glad I don’t have to ask her name.”
One day in college, class was cancelled and some of us went out to get a bite to eat. Once we sat down, we realized we had no idea of the name of one of our party. Someone said, “Hey, did you get the new Driver’s license? They’ve changed the way they look now.” And thus he was coaxed to let us pass his ID back and forth.
Great subterfuge there. I would never have thought of that. Because I’m dumb and embarrassment is great at sending inhibitory signals to the frontal lobe.
I worked in a place with name tags about 15 years ago. The tags had the person’s name and the flag of their country. I still remember about 400 of their names, but I can’t remember the names of many of my colleagues, professors, students and acquaintances from the past three or four years.
It’s funny. We evolved in a system where our social groups tended towards everyone knowing everyone else’s business, and there were only maybe a couple hundred people you ever met your entire life. And you lived with those people your whole life.
Meeting such massive numbers of people and being so temporarily involved with each other is a feature of civilization, which is still basically brand new to our biology and something we’re still figuring out from an evolutionary perspective. Civilization can be deeply unhealthy for us, despite its massive benefits.
So true. If only more people understood that it isn’t a moral failing, more a genetic one.
I’m glad I’m at an age where we all acknowledge that brain farts about names are going to happen, even about people we know well (our kids all joke about us getting their names wrong, sometimes in spectacular ways…yup, it happens), so we know the subtle signs and are not fussed at all. For example, if someone comes over and starts talking to your friend/colleague and they’re clearly trying to introduce you without introducing you, that means they don’t know the name so the right response is to stick our your hand and say “Hi, I’m chgoliz, how do YOU know Kyle?” or some such.
I think quite a bit of this issue has to do with codifying relationships while somewhere on the Autistic spectrum. I think I’m probably somewhere along there - every test I’ve done has strongly suggested it and anything written about things like relationships for autistic people has made a lot of sense from my own experience. The way I see it, neurotypicals are actually fully capable of normal human relationships and showing love, although they do have a number of handicaps when it comes to being honest about what they actually think. This is not their fault; it is just a genetic accident that means that they can’t be upfront about how they’re feeling and introduces a lot of taboos when it comes to behavioural patterns that are very arbitrary. They talk to other people about what they want in a relationship, but often can’t seem to be honest with their own partners and deal with issues in the open. I wouldn’t call being neurotypical a mental deficiency, but it does present a number of potential issues that people should be aware of before starting a relationship with them.
It’s important to be very patient - many neurotypicals will have some trouble discussing topics in the open, and will expect you to be able to read their mind using actions and words that have a very loose connection to the issue. Be aware of this, as failure to understand what seem to be deliberately obfuscated messages can be met with passive aggressiveness. With some help, neurotypicals can be taught to be more open about what they are actually feeling though, so don’t give up hope!
Above all, don’t assume that every problem in the relationship can be explained by neurotypicals’ odd behaviour and thought patterns. It’s quite possible that they are used to being understood by other people, so admitting your failure to understand and not assuming that they are just playing games with you is important. Odd and redundant demonstrations of love can be worth investing in anyway, as this matters to some neurotypicals. Many neurotypicals don’t actually know what this is actually for or can’t describe the process clearly, but with some patience they can give some pointers and make everyone’s lives easier.
In reality, many neurotypicals are not good at understanding body language and may interpret yours completely wrong, but you shouldn’t look down at them for this. All of us have problems understanding the world around us, and human relationships are one context where this is often the case. It’s true that living with neurotypicals can make your life very difficult at times, but remember that they are probably thinking the same about you!
Other people can be scary. Trying to accept other people as they are and trying to communicate with them using premises and definitions acceptable to both of you is scary.
I’ll counter that perhaps they are just using forms of communication and methods that are transparent to them that you simply can’t parse. In other words, maybe they are communicating and being completely obvious but autistic folks are oblivious to these forms of communication so they don’t even see them.
I know a lot of fairly autistic people and a common problem for many is an inability to parse (or often even see) non-verbal communication. Non-verbal communication, as primates, is relatively clear to most people (within reason) and does not need to be explicitly explained with out loud verbal expression. Hence you get a lot of spectrum folks saying “My partner can’t communicate with me or doesn’t communicate well” while their partner is thinking “I don’t know how much clearer I can be without having to spell EVERYTHING out verbally, which is annoying and pedantic.”
You kind of acknowledge this but you make it sound like it is an odd thing. The key part of the word “neurotypical” is “typical” (as in “the majority or norm of people”).
Oh HELL yeah. I have so many little tricks. “How bout you introduce yourself?” “I forget, where is your family from?”. " Wait a second, I’m high on quaaludes and I don’t know who I am".
That last one, when you say it perfectly Deadpan, always gets people to say their name with a wink and smile.
“Sorry to ask you to repeat yourself, but I’m on a lot of mescaline right now.”
“Got it, the six-headed eagle-man with an octopus beak and twelve stars in his stomach is Anthony. I’ll remember that.”
My favorite one to this day is:
“Damn, I’m glad you’re driving right now, cause I’m high as a kite”.
Said by the guy driving.
Forgetting a name? Faw-get-about-it.
Ginger: Who are those two guys over there?
Digby: … Are they us?
Ginger: No sir, we’re the blokes right here.
You know, if working the night shift has taught me anything, it’s:
Alone, baaaaad. Friend, goooooooood.
I think this is the most important part of your message. All humans misunderstand each other for innumerable reasons whether or not they’re neurotypical. I’m pretty certain I’m not on the autism spectrum, but I did grow up with a lot of autistic people, and was often put in classes with them, due to my ADD causing similar symptoms like avoidance of eye-contact (really I just liked looking at interesting things, rather than boring people’s faces) and not noticing social cues (I’m too excited about this cool dog to listen to your boring bullshit about irregular verbs! What the fuck is your problem? Aren’t cool dogs rad?)
This is true and something I’ve found myself. There are many messages that are sent on a completely different wavelength to anything I can pick up, yet I am clearly expected to notice them. It can seem like I am being obtuse, but I really didn’t get it. On the other hand, other people can seem deliberately evasive, even though it is clear that they mean to be understood. Then again, being candid can give the wrong message and sometimes it seems that certain people have real problems being open about what they mean in a verbal way rather than skirting around the issue. I don’t just mean using body language, I mean an aversion to using words to discuss issues that really matter to them.
At the end of the day, you are not communicating or being obvious if your meaning is not clear to the person you’re trying to communicate to. If I am autistic, it isn’t nearly as severe for me as for many people and I do pick up some behavioural cues. However, it’s like being a second language speaker and so there are going to be times when I don’t get the full message, or get the wrong message. If I speak to a second language English speaker, I will sometimes need to spell things out verbally or find other ways to say it. This doesn’t mean that this person is not intelligent or not trying to communicate, although it may be annoying if I want to use more complex concepts. I only consider myself to be clear if they have understood my meaning.
I do recognise that a lot of the issues come from difficulties that spectrum people have. However, I wanted to show it from the other perspective - it’s absurd to say that neurotypical people’s ability to communicate or their capacity for love is in doubt because of their communication style or the way their mind works. However, there are some senses in which a world where the majority were on the spectrum would consider neurotypical people to be the ones who had problems with communication.
It may seem awkward, but a rule that my wife and I established early on in our relationship was that neither of us has the right to expect anything of the other person or get annoyed at them for failing to do something if we haven’t heard that person repeat the expectation back to us. Sometimes it really can require spelling it out, but we’ve seen miscommunications in our own relationship and in others that were worse than annoying. It actually really helps to assume as little as possible about the other person’s comprehension - not in a way that belittles them, but just to avoid overestimating the quality of the transfer of information and to prevent more problems later.
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